


Coffin

by Kalypso



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-04
Updated: 2005-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 15:19:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time Squad's chilling back story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffin

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Freedom City Birthday Party of 2005, on the theme of Minions, thought it started life as an eight-word outline for the 2002 party (On Board), when I didn't have time to write a proper story. Three years on, I'd pretty much forgotten what it was that I'd planned to do. And even once I'd worked out something else, the inconvenient details of the actual episode forced a significant rewrite. But my original eight-worder is attached at the end, to avoid spoilers.

Beep beep beep beep...

_Are they safe?_

Beep beep beep beep... 

_Do we face attack?_

He opened his eyes, and saw nothing; stretched his arms, and hit cold walls either side of him. 

I've been buried alive, he thought, flailing desperately as his head hit a ceiling just above him.

 _The future depends on you._

He dropped back, gasping, trying to knit his memories together. He suddenly had a clear image of Varra looking down on him, and with that the threads began to form a recognisable pattern. 

The mission. The gene bank. The brood unit. Being chosen from all of the Elite Guard. His pride. The clinic. Training. The sadness of parting. Boarding the ship and climbing into the capsule. Varra looking down on him. The final memory: Varra's voice, reminding him of their mission's importance, and how he and the others would plant the seeds of the Karab empire on a new world, then gas filling his nostrils. 

And now the time had come. His fingers were already feeling for the release buttons; he hit the first one, and the protective outer cover slid down the capsule, making him blink as he saw light for the first time since... how long ago? The second button opened the glass cover, and he breathed in the drier air of the ship. He hauled himself up on his elbows, swung his feet to the ground; reeled for a moment as his legs struggled to remember their function, then struck his head as he straightened up. Half-bent, he lurched determinedly to the rear of the ship, and checked all the readings on the gene bank and brood unit. Safe.

Why weren't the others awake yet? He was beginning to feel the excitement now, itching to see the new world they would colonise. That would be his privilege: the first to wake, the first to see their future. He walked to the front of the ship, frowned in recollection at the control panel, then pressed the buttons to turn on the viewscreen.

Nothing but darkness and a scattering of stars.

His heart jolted for a moment, then he realised that the ship need not be facing the planet. He called up the rear view.

The same.

He jabbed at the controls again, calling up every angle - above, below, left, right, then forwards and back again. There was nothing, nothing but the same darkness and distant stars. They had not reached any sort of destination; they were still in deep space.

A dull pain began to pulse behind his eyes.

He noticed another beeping now, not the one which had awoken him, and he followed the sound to the blinking light of the circuit tracer. The autonavigation system, he was pretty sure. That must have shut down the engines, and even if he could start them up he would not know where to go. With no idea of how long they had slept, he could not begin to guess at how far space drift might have carried them from their prescribed course. Why had the ship's computer woken him - because the fault had just occurred, or because they had exceeded the scheduled time for the journey?

Had anything else malfunctioned? He ran to check the gene bank again, his head throbbing. The readings assured him it remained safe, and the throbbing eased.

He turned to the capsules beside his own, and hit the button to open the nearest. The outer cover slid back, revealing the still body of Arnas inside. Carefully, he touched the inner lid with one finger, and snatched it away, burnt by the cold. No, Arnas would not be waking up yet. He inspected Tak's capsule, with similar results, and then, to make quite sure, opened the hatch at the back of the ship. Ido, too.

All the capsules sealed again, he stumbled to the viewscreen and gazed at the stars, still hoping against hope to see something else. But he was more alone than ever. He could not even look back towards Karab: he had no idea in which direction it lay. And only then did it hit him. If they had been travelling for two centuries, Sangli - everyone at home - was dead.

Wake Arnas, he thought. He'll have some idea what to do. He's the leader, why was I woken up? I don't know how to deal with this. Relieved, he turned to the cryogenic controls, then hesitated. As he did so, the pain behind his eyes was sharper.

_Reanimation takes several hours._

But by then, they would be very short of air, and two men would use it twice as quickly. 

Briefly, he found himself panting at the thought, and clamped his hand over his mouth, trying to slow down his breathing. Hyperventilation was all he needed.

_Save the gene bank. Save the brood unit. Save the mission._

How???

He crouched on the seat in front of the screen and gazed in despair at the unmoving stars.

_Each of you is ultimately expendable, as long as the gene bank is safe. But at least one must survive long enough to activate it._

And that one should be Arnas, he thought. My job is to make sure he comes through.

Mend autonavigation? He had had plenty of training on flying the ship, but only the basics on maintaining it - and the air would be gone well before he could hope to tackle a job on that scale. Restart the engines, and try to reach a planet with air, or even a technician who could be forced to make the repairs? He gazed at the viewscreen again. Even if he managed it, even if there were a habitable, technologically capable planet out there, the air would not last long enough.

Only one thing left, then: put out a distress call. His head began to throb again. 

_But they will be at the mercy of whoever finds them._

He pictured himself lying in wait, overpowering the unwary intruders, and the pain diminished a little. That was closer to the heroic role for which he had been born. But it was useless to pretend that he would last long enough to play it.

The ship, he reasoned, would be undefended whether the intruders came upon it by chance or in answer to a signal. The only difference was that the signal might bring someone sooner, and that, he had to believe, might shorten the odds on the gene bank's survival. After all, if anyone tried to activate it, they would soon be overwhelmed, even if they did not start by reanimating Arnas and the others. And then, another ship, with its own air and power source... It was a gamble, but he could not see any other move that would improve their position.

The voice in his mind was still arguing, but he tried to focus on the panel, reached out a shaking hand, slammed the control of the distress relay and saw its red pulsing glow.

Well, that was it. He had done all he could, and every breath he took now weakened the mission. He looked one last time at the stars before turning off the screen.

_You are expendable. You cannot return to your people. You have failed._

No, I haven't failed, not yet, he assured himself, and I could never return anyway. But my people are with me, and I can still fight for them. Get back into the capsule, and I can still be there to bring about the mission's success.

His head brushed the wires on the ceiling as he shuffled back to the capsule he had left only minutes ago. Then he stopped, staring at the cryogenic controls. Green to freeze, and red to thaw.

There was just one problem. He had never mentioned it during training, because he was afraid that any admission of imperfection might see him thrown off the programme, even though he never expected it to be relevant. He was red-green colourblind.

That was why he had initially hesitated over Arnas. The solution was obvious enough; try one button, and if it doesn't work, it must be the other. But he would have had to wait to be quite certain what he was doing to Arnas; with himself, it would be easier. If he smelled the freezing gas and felt cold after a few seconds, he would have chosen correctly; if he felt warmer, he would know he wanted the other button. Hurry up and get on with it, he thought, as his head began to ache again. You're wasting air.

He struck the nearer button, then quickly sat down and swung his legs inside the capsule. The outer and inner covers slid over him, sealing him once again in airtight darkness. For a little while, he sensed no difference; then he thought he felt a little warmth. Certainly no cold.

He reopened the covers, got out, hit the second button twice to be sure, climbed back and sealed himself in.

He shuddered as he smelled gas filling the capsule, but it was with relief as much as fear. As he breathed it in, he was already beginning to feel sleepy. He imagined the soft weight of Sangli's body holding him down, yes, and he was on a mission to the stars, it was tomorrow that he would be setting off, wasn't it, to be a hero of his race, guardian of a new colony, yes, that would all begin when he woke up, but now he just wanted to sleep.

 

One hundred and four years later, Avon activated the reanimation unit.

"Can we speed it up?" asked Blake.

Avon supposed that, by now, he should know better than to expect Blake to be impressed by the fact he had worked it out at all. "It's programmed. Interfere with it and you could kill them." Actually, he wasn't quite sure, but he liked to sound authoritative. 

Vila cast an eye at the frozen coffin, shivered, and decided to go and look for Gan.

**Author's Note:**

> The original version:
> 
> TIME SQUAD - THE [CHILLING] BACK STORY
> 
> Bloke wakes up, thinks "oh bugger" and dies.


End file.
